Alpine and Nordic sports, such as skiing and snowboarding, are popular activities that are enjoyed by many people around the world. Conventionally, these activities are performed on ski slopes and people will often travel significant distances to find such slopes, for example, to practice skills, to compete, or to simply be able to try out the activity and enjoy the experience.
Such sports are prevalent in mountainous geographical regions having natural snow-covered slopes. However, during certain periods of the year snow may disappear from the slopes at a given location. Thus, it may be necessary to travel elsewhere during these periods to find a snow-covered ski slope. However, traveling to seek snow covered slopes can be expensive and may not be a realistic option for many people.
As an alternative, found particularly in countries that do not have natural snow-covered slopes, there are provided man-made ski slope facilities, such as “dry” or artificial ski slopes that can be visited more readily and that are operational and usable throughout the year.
However, there are drawbacks associated with artificial ski slopes in that they may not be provided in a convenient location and as a result people may not have the time to visit or may be put off visiting altogether. Further, it can be costly to travel and visit an artificial ski slope. In addition, trips to an artificial ski slope, even when located nearby, can be difficult where it is necessary to organise a party of people, for example, when arranging for school children to visit the ski slope on a school excursion.
Thus, many people may miss out on opportunities of experiencing skiing and other similar sports and there exists a need for people to be able to experience such activities more readily.
Currently temporary artificial ski slopes are known that can be constructed in situ by assembling a scaffolding support frame at a desired location and providing a ski slope surface on the scaffolding support frame. However, these structures suffer significant drawbacks. In particular, the scaffolding needs to be assembled on site which is relatively time consuming. Upon moving to a new site the scaffolding must be disassembled, collected and transported to the new site where the scaffolding must then be offloaded and re-assembled. This process can be time consuming and cumbersome. Further, it may typically require a number of workers to construct and later dismantle the structure. Overall, providing such temporary structures can be inefficient and costly and they are not readily provided in convenient locations.
It is amongst the objects of the present invention to obviate or at least mitigate drawbacks and deficiencies associated with existing artificial ski slopes.